WALNUT – Despite the idea being shot down last year, the City Council tonight will again consider allowing the county to handle city elections.

The council will discuss whether to consolidate Walnut’s municipal elections with the county, a change that would move the next election date from April 2012 to Nov. 8, 2011.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Councilman Tom King, a long-time proponent of consolidation. “It costs us more money to conduct our own elections, it takes a tremendous amount of staff time and it’s confusing to the voters because we have different voting periods.”

Walnut is one of a handful of cities in the San Gabriel Valley that conducts its own elections. Most others pay the county to operate them in November of odd-numbered years.

According to staff reports, an election run by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk would cost $59,000 based on three seats up for election, compared to the in-house election cost of $97,465 for two seats.

But if the city runs its own election, it can be reimbursed up to $52,350 by the state, according to city records. How long state funding will be available for the reimbursement program, however, is unknown, officials said.

“There are obvious advantages of going with the county,” said Councilman Joaquin Lim. “But if (city-run elections) are faster, cheaper and more accurate, at this point, I don’t see what the economic benefit might be to go with the county.”

The Board of Supervisors would also have to approve the change, which would cut short the terms of some City Council members by six months.

City staff is also concerned that it will be difficult to fulfill multilingual election requirements set by the United States Justice Department, which sued Walnut in 2007 for not translating voting material for Chinese- and Korean-speaking voters.

The agreement expired in December, but they are still required to follow certain criteria, City Manager Rob Wishner said.

“We are no longer under the Department of Justice’s thumb,” Wishner said. “We have a clean bill of health and I want to stay that way. If we have the county take over, DOJ could knock on our backdoor again.”